From: ATHONK@delphi.com
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 22:17:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Movie review, CARRINGTON
[Please contact the author at ATHONK@delphi.com for reprint rights.]
Copyright 1995 by Kenneth Athon
Movie Review
"Carrington" omits lesbian element of artist's life
by Kenneth Athon
If you think your love life is a shambles, consider the case of Dora
Carrington.
Born 1893 in England, Dora idolized her elderly father and practically hated
her mother. Not educated formally in the British sense of the word, she
nevertheless was able to attend a school of fine arts, where she developed
her drawing and painting skills admirably. It was there that she began
wearing her hair in a short "bob" style--the equivalent of today's teens'
blue hair and pierced noses--and insisted on being called, simply, Carrington.
At art school, she was so popular that she had two suiters, who
happened also to be best friends. Their love for Carrington ultimately
destroyed their friendship. Both tried without success to simply seduce her
and when that failed after years --not just weeks or months but years--of
trying, both proposed marriage. Perhaps for the sake of the friendships
and not wanting to alienate either of the boys, she steadfastly remained a
virgin despite attempts by several mutual friends to convince her otherwise,
and she married neither.
It was while still courting the more persistent of her young suiters, that
she met an older writer, Lytton Strachey. It was an odd, awkward meeting;
Strachey, seeing Carrington from afar, thought she was a young man and was
literally speechless when he was formally introduced to her. Later, while
Strachey was trying to convince Carrington that her suiter was right for her,
she professed her love for Strachey instead. It mattered not to her that
Strachey was homosexual. In fact, she offered her viginity first to him, but
he was impotent at the thought of hetero-sex.
Carrington was full of contradictions. She was a pacifist, yet professed a
willingness to serve England in World War I, simply for the sake of service.
She was heterosexual (primarily) but would neither marry nor consummate her
relationships for the sake of love. When she did marry, it was the sake of
bringing her bisexual husband into a more permanent place in
Strachey's--not her own--life. While married, she allowed her husband to have
a live-in mistress while she carried on secret affairs.
While she could remain aloof from her suiters, husband and lovers, she was
utterly devoted to Strachey. Drawings, sketches and paintings of Strachey
adorned every wall in her house. It was, as she described, a self-debasing
love, the love that puts self not second but last, an love wherein she not
only doted on Stachey, but nursed his every ailment and even bathed him.
The new movie, "Carrington," by the screenwriter of "Dangerous Liasons," is a
sad portrait of the artist who could find no adequate meaning for her
life other than loving men, principally Strachey, who could not love her
with the same intensity. The story is framed, not by the development of her
art or by some other measure, but by the men who were the center of her short
life.
It's unfortunate that the film cannot tell the whole story of Carrington's
life within this framework because it omits Carrington's one love interest
that surpassed those of the men who had pursued her. In 1923, she fell in
love with Henrietta Bingham, the daughter of the American ambassador. In a
letter to a friend, Carrington related, "I am very much more taken with
Henrietta than I have been with anyone for a long time. I feel now regrets
at being such a blasted fool in the past, to stifle so many lusts I had
in my youth, for various females." Carrington's biographer, Gretchen Gerzina,
reports that Henrietta and Carrington were lovers, at least for a short while.
The film, "Carrington," opened nationwide November 22. If the movie comes to
a theater near you, see it. Stay for the final credits to see examples of
Carrington's art, which is now coveted by collectors.
[Copyright 1995 by Kenneth Athon. Athon is founder of Nashville's
G/L/B weekly newspaper, XENOGENY.]